Bouncers (Remix) review: Humour fights the hell of life on the doors in classic on Leamington stage

Bouncers (Remix), by John Godber, ain’t exactly what you’d call pretty. ​It describes a slice of working-class life in 1990s urban Yorkshire. The jobs people do, if they have them, are rubbish, dead-end jobs. For young people with nowhere else to go, escape means getting drunk at the local disco on a Friday night, a place where Bacchanalian orgies are pretty much par for the course.

Such a grim premise begs for humour, and it gets it, in spades, along with tragedy, heroism, and a rapport that is as sharp as a broken bottle. Four lads, Judd (Connor Bailey), Ralph (Paul Curran) Les (Charlie Longman) and Lucky Eric (Mark Roberts) work as bouncers, sorting out the riffraff, deciding who gets in and who doesn’t, and chucking out a few when it gets too heavy. These lads have seen it all, the very depths of human behaviour. Not that they’re above it themselves. They leer and long for lust along with all the others, male and female. Relaxation after a long night at 3am is for them a snuff movie.

Awful as this sounds, the play and the performances are beautifully, poignantly funny. The four actors switch effortlessly between characters as they play the eponymous bouncers as well as the men and women they guard. Lucky Eric, whose luck runs no further than picking up fallen cash on the dance floor, is the one with something like a heart. He describes a scene in which he witnesses the gang rape of a drunken woman in a pub where no-one, except him, pays any attention. “Go home,” he tells her after he has beaten up all her assailants. “Give us a kiss,” she says.

Is this hell, a place where there is no hope, and only humour keeps the darkness at bay? There is no sunshine here, but sharp observation, lightning-fast wit, delicate, exact choreography, and four stellar performances light up the night sky. It’s a spectacle to behold.

Bouncers (Remix) runs until Saturday May 11. Visit lofttheatrecompany.com or call 01926 830680 to book.